PES will never be a "rip-off product"

With EA launching its paid-for Season Ticket service for sports games, Konami is considering introducing micro-transactions to future versions of PES - but told Eurogamer it was "not in the business of trying to get every last penny out of someone's pocket".

Asked whether the Japanese company would follow EA's lead, PES producer Seabass said: "I understand that there is a need to do something similar to EA. However at this moment we still do not have something concrete in place."

PES European Team Leader Jon Murphy explained: "There's a balance to be struck between making sure the consumer out of the box gets a playable, excellent quality version they don't need to buy extra parts for."

He added: "I think there's also a place for trying to find areas where we can supply additional content that is really requested by the players.

"At some stage we'd like to see the possibility of introducing micro-payments for certain things, but at the same time we want to make sure PES isn't seen as a rip-off product."

With the release of PES 2012 looming, Konami is focusing on what it believes is another important step forward for the franchise after last season's reboot.

New features unveiled at Gamescom included Club Boss, where players "step into the shoes of the owner of a club," which, alongside existing feature like Become A Legend and Master League, Murphy said would give players "a flavour of everything, the whole football career".

My PES, meanwhile, is "the first time there's been a direct connection between a console game and Facebook," according to Murphy, enabling players to compete with other Facebook users, create private groups and leagues, and rate performance against other players not just on their friends list, but also by city and country.

"There are no [extra] charges involved in this," said Murphy.

Reflecting on last year's relaunch of the series, after the studio admitted struggling to adapt to the current generation, Seabass said: "As you might easily imagine it was not very easy to reach the level I wanted to and took a long time to get to the level where I can be confident.

"This game has reached that level, and I'm very much happy to say that to you."